Talk:Grace in Christianity
I've attempted to provide an outline here: what in my no doubt vain imaginings I hope would serve as a shared statement outlining and defining grace in Christian theology, that I hope can be shared at least by Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. I'm going to leave it alone for a while, waiting for all those with theological interests to pick it apart before I do much more with it.
I've also set up on subjects that IMO ought to be touched on in a discussion of the differences between Orthodox, RC, and Protestant concepts of grace, starting with law vs. grace in the New Testament and working forward more or less historically.
I don't really know if Mormons, Unificationists, Jews, or Muslims have concepts of grace that ought to be discussed in the article, but probably under subheadings of their own.
I await your vehement disagreements. -- IHCOYC 17:27 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)
- It's actually not a bad start. I'll just say that under the "imperial churches", the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox only hold maybe around half of those doctrines in common. Many of them were innovations the Catholics made after the Great Schism, or had roots in ideas held by them before that but were not shared in the East. In particular, the idea of merit and a "treasurehouse" of grace, and distinguishing between mortal and venial sins, generally reflect Western Christianity's more legalistic way of looking at sin and grace, rather than the East's more relational way of looking at it. You probably want to mention Purgatory in there as well, although that's another Roman-only doctrine. And in general, everything needs to be couched as "This is what Christianity teaches" or "This is what XXX Christian tradition teaches" rather than stating any of this as bald fact, for wikipedia NPOV reasons. Wesley 17:48 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)
Re: reference to imperial churches. This seems to be a topic list about concepts from the Roman Catholic Church. If so, then referring to the church with other than its normal name would seem to be a suggestion of illegitimacy. So lets use the correct name. If imperial churches is instead a more precise term, I apologize...just put it back. User:Williamv1138
- By "imperial churches" I meant the churches whose roots are in the state churches of the two divisions of the Roman empire: what eventually came to be called the Roman Catholic church, heirs to the Latin-speaking church of the Western Empire; and the several Eastern Orthodox churches, which ultimately have their roots in the church of the Greek-speaking Eastern Empire. -- IHCOYC 20:16 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)
- A couple points about the so-called "imperial churches": first of all, there was only one Church from its founding on Pentecost until we began to see actual schisms, such as the Montanists, non-chalcedonians, and eventually the Great Schism between East and West. But you're talking about the church involved with the Emperor, and for most intents and purposes this would have been the Byzantine Emperor. Another point: Constantine I did not make Christianity the state religion. All he did was call off the persecutions, and summon the first ecumenical council to bring unity to the church. He didn't participate in the council or unduly affect its outcome; I'm not even aware of any serious accusations that he did. The "several" Eastern Orthodox churches for the most part remain in full communion with each other, just as they did then, beginning with the churches of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria. You can refer to each patriarchate as a separate church, or each diocese, or each parish, but these distinctions are nothing like the distinctions between denominations. They are regional distinctions for purposes of governance. Wesley 17:22 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)
I'm removing the following paragraph because it is expressed as pure speculation and the opinion of its author:
- It should be obvious from the foregoing discussion of law and grace, of free forgiveness versus obedience to a formal code of conduct, that the relationship of Christian institutions to the surrounding social order is something that you would expect to influence doctrine on the subject. An established church must emphasize law and obedience by its nature. Part of its social function is to clothe an existing government and the social order it upholds with the mantle of holiness. This change of social role was likely to affect the way the church approached the issues of law versus grace.
I've also tried to remove uses of the first and second person ("We" and "you") to make it sound less like a sermon and more like an encyclopedia article. Wesley 17:35 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)